Re: Compile Time vs. Run Time, Mixed Language Compiling, Fat Code

drw@euclid.mit.edu (Dale R. Worley) writes:
>... in Ada, once the program compiles, there are very
>few bugs in it. Ada was designed with the intention of turning what would
>be run-time bugs in C into compile-time bugs, and it appears that it has
>succeeded to a large extent.


OK, this takes care of the easy bugs. The real bugs, the ones that take
time to find, the difficult ones, are the conceptual bugs, design errors,
synchronisation errors and the like. A compiler will not help me find
these.


I have found that the more experienced a programmer becomes, generally and
with a specific language, then he/she makes fewer of the "easy" bugs. This
is unfortunate as most compilers and support environments concentrate on
the "easy" bugs. If I have a large system with many concurrent activities
that stops after 3 weeks running then knowing that the parameters to
functions are of the right type will probably not help me much.


Robert
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